The Carter Lab (left) attended the conference for the North American Society for Bat Research, and we won two awards from the society.
Julia Vrtilek entered the student competition and received the Titley Scientific Award for student talk “on any aspect of the biology of bats” for her presentation “Vocal convergence in the contact calls of common vampire bats“.
I received the Thomas H. Kunz Recognition Award, which “recognizes and celebrates exemplary contributions by an early or mid-career scientist to the study of bats, including measurable impacts on bat research and/or conservation, student mentoring, public education, and collaborations. “
I am the second person to receive the award following Winifred Frick who I greatly admire. I was so surprised that I could not manage a coherent acceptance speech. All I could think about was all the other excellent bat biologists who were equally deserving of this award. Also, science is almost always a team effort, where many people play key roles that are easy to overlook. It would be interesting to consider how we could give more scientific awards to teams rather than individuals.
Anyhow, I am extremely thankful to be recognized in this way by this society, which has been my “scientific family” since I attended my first meeting as an undergraduate in October 2003, which is 20 years ago now. And that means I’ve spent over half my life studying bats.
Carter Lab 